When I was 16 & a BT Apprentice I spent a period with the cable gangs.To be fair there are cable winches that are trailer mounted and work in a much similar way to a machine track, they are usually metal drum to wrap the draw rope round.
BT use them a lot on their cable installs & upgrades!
Given the phone lines were multi-strand (potentially hundreds of cores in one sheath) and usually in ducts under roadways - pulling them in is essential.
As said - they had a big trailer mounted driven Capstan unit, and used (can't recall the name) steel woven pullers with a ring for the tow rope.
You picked the right size and put it over the cable end and taped it's foot to the sheath. As pull force is applied, the lattice steel strands exerted increasing force & grip on the sheath, so the harder the pull the greater the grip force.
They'd manage to pull new cables into ducts that already had other cables in situ with the kit.